(screengrab from last night’s Stewart Lee Comedy Vehicle on the BBC, featuring a guest appearance by the Sage of Northampton)

TV isn’t doing comedy all that well at the moment (Tramadol Nights anyone? Oh dear). So maybe a quality comedy magazine might be the answer. And as luck would have it, Alex Musson has just released a new issue of his comedy mag Mustard.

Personally I have no idea why Musson’s releasing a new issue in the week where practically no-one orders stuff online, where the post is struggling to cope with the yuletide tidal wave of letters and parcels and where we’re all hunkering down in sub zero temperatures and wondering just how high the snow is going to get and whether we’ll be able to get to the shops for sprouts or not.

But here it is – Mustard issue 5. I haven’t got a copy (yet), but based on past experience, I know Mustard is impressive, well designed, a good read and best of all, especially for a magazine about comedy – it’s funny.

Issue 5 promises interviews with Stuart Lee and Richard Herring, articles from Alan Moore and Matt Berry and 36 pages of funny stuff.

And all for just £2.50 – available from the Mustard Shop.

It’s the last weekend of the madness that is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this weekend and as part of the fun Norman Lovett, in town with his own show, lol, which runs until the 30th of August, is going to come in to do a signing in the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet on Southbridge, just a few minutes walk from some of the major Fringe venues, today, Saturday 28th from 4 to 5pm, so please do take the chance to come down and meet him.

Norman Lovett has appeared in many things but will always be loved by SF fans for playing Holly, the once all-knowing AI on Red Dwarf, now sadly subject to computer senility after several million years. Norman has also had a very long career as a stand-up and while he’s in an absolutely heaving Edinburgh for the Fringe he’s verykindly going to pay a visit to the Edinburgh Forbidden Planet. Norman will be in our branch on Southbridge (a moment’s walk from the Royal Mile) on Saturday August the 28th from 4 to 5pm,  so please do come along and say hi.

Norman’s show – lol – is running at the Gilded Balloon’s Teviot venue at 10.30pm through until the 30th of August (in fact right after Beano artist Kev Sutherland’s Scottish Falsetto Socks show; Kev tells me he is really enjoying handing over to Norman each night). For more details of events, offers and the latest goodies to arrive in your local FPI check out their Facebook groups.

Alex Musson writes in from Mustard central to let us know a couple of things:

“You can now buy a set of six Mustard movie postcards and also, if you’re an Alan Moore fan you might like the desktop wallpaper sized version of the poster I did for The IT Crowd). In other Mustard news, the third set of Daily Mustard pages come out in Dodgem Logic #3″

Yep, cool postcards, cool Alan Moore desktop and Dodgem Logic #3. More details, and the chance to buy the very good Mustard magazine on Alex Musson’s Mustard website.

(Casablanketyblank and Withnail and I, Robot, two of the Mustard postcards)

(A dying Bill Hicks on his final tour, saying whatever he damned well pleased and sobering up Jesse Custer’s worldview at the same time in Preacher by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, published DC)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-IHNgVmqcw

by Mawil

Blank Slate

This is the second book from Mawil to be released by Blank Slate (the first; his very impressive look at young life and relationships; We Can Still Be Friends was reviewed here). But Sparky O’Hare is a completely different book; a cute, charming and ever so funny series of 4 panel strips featuring the adventures of the world’s most incompetent electrician, who just happens to be a rabbit.

Sparky O’Hare is a tiny wee book. Much smaller than I was expecting. Just a few inches each way. Maybe it’s aiming to hit the market as a “the little book of comedy genius”? Because that’s what it is. I haven’t found a funny book to be this funny in a long, long time.

Reviewing a comedy strip like Sparky O’Hare that relies on a very simple set-up and repetition for it’s gags is always a problem, because essentially it can be covered very simply with one line:

Is it funny?

Well the answer here is a resounding yes. Oh yes. Absolutely yes.

Mawil uses a very small cast for this brilliant little comedy, relying at first on the comedy coming from just five characters; the incompetent electrician rabbit who can cause chaos to anything electrical or mechanical just by walking past it, the bumbling boss who genuinely believes his electrician to be the greatest thing since sliced bread and the three secretaries who quickly realise just how terrible Sparky is and that they can find a use for his devastating ways.

(Sparky’s boss – so wonderfully blind to his favourite electrician’s failings. From Mawil’s Sparky O’Hare.)

On the simplest read through it’s just a bloody funny strip, beautifully drawn and full of wonderfully timed gags. But even though that would still be enough to make it worth picking up, there’s a little more to it than that. The gags keep coming thick and fast and once Mawil’s milked everything out of the office situation he cleverly expands the scope of Sparky with a variety of different situations, most memorably sending Sparky and a secretary off to a conference in the Far East – possibly not the best thing to do really, an electrician who’s a complete disaster to every piece of electrical equipment on a plane:

The whole book is packed with a fantastic kinetic comedy and Mawil’s timing is just exquisite. And whilst he always comes back to Sparky’s chaotic effect on any machinery that happens to serve the gag best; photocopiers, computers, aeroplanes, pacemakers, speed cameras and much more, Mawil is very, very clever in the way he approaches each gag. Quite often he actually delivers the punchline slightly early in the strip and uses the final panel to let the gag sink in. It’s simply brilliantly funny, very clever stuff.

I could now go on and on about it but suffice it to say it’s just one of those books that comes with at least a wry smile on each page and usually much more, up to and including uncontrollable ribcage hurting guffaws. And that’s the best recommendation I think I can possibly give.

Just in case you happen to doubt me, there are more samples here on the FPI blog. But we’ve just got time for one more here showing a little bit of the naughty side to Mawil’s Bunny (but never that naughty – just in case you had it earmarked as a nice present for a younger reader the most you get is a little suggestion and a few panels of topless sunbathing in the Majorca strips – so maybe a PG13):

The only problem you might have with this book is actually finding it – such small dimensions means it can easily be lost amongst the crowd on a shelf. If you’re very lucky you’ll be in a shop which has ordered enough to get one of the lovely counter displays. But if not, order in from the FPI webstore here. And then order some more for presents – perfect stuff.

Richard Bruton is convinced the people who fixed his roof are relations of Sparky…

Editor / Designer Alex Musson

Self Published.

(Kevin O’Neill’s great Alan Moore illstration against a backdrop of Moore comics)

I Came to this one rather late after reading about the big Alan Moore interview in this issue somewhere online. I’m even later reviewing it. So late in fact that by now it’s well into it’s recession driven hiatus. Which is rather a shame, because based on this issue, it’s actually a funny magazine about comedy.

Obviously the big draw for me is the Alan Moore interview. I’ve said before now that any interview with Moore is worth reading, no matter how many times he’s talking about the same sorts of things, there’s always something interesting in what he has too say. And so it is here. It’s a big interview; 15 pages of dense stuff, but very well designed dense stuff. Lots of information on each page but all laid out in a nice, visually appealling style. Like it says in the lead in… “And boy, can he talk”.

(Another great Alan Moore illo, this time by Dave Sim.)

But once the Moore interview was read and digested I turned my attention to the rest of the magazine. And the actual comedy bits of it are very good indeed.

Think of it perhaps as a more grown up Viz mag. There’s spoof articles such as “Cruel Prank Targets Nation’s Arsewits: Thousands of young men across Britain have been fooled by a new lad’s mag that covertly featured interesting, informative and non-nudity related articles“. Then there’s single panel gag strips, spoof movie news, book reviews and much more.

It’s a real shame that Mustard #4 may well be the last one available for a while, but I’d still recommend heading off to your local Borders to see if they still have the issue. Or alternatively go to the Mustard website to pick up all 4 issues.

A funny magazine about comedy. Indeed it is.

Richard Bruton